Tusk. Ora deve affrontare l’accusa di tradimento.

Giuseppe Sandro Mela.

2017-03-29.

«Tusk now faces treason charges»

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«Donald Tusk has been summoned as a witness in a case against former heads of military counter-intelligence services (SKW), who were charged with co-operating with intelligence services of another country without the required authorization of the prime minister»

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«European Council head Tusk refuses to testify in Warsaw probe»

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«European Council head Donald Tusk won’t testify in a prosecutor’s probe in Warsaw into cooperation between Polish and Russian secret services when he was PM»

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«Donald Tusk has been summoned as a witness in a case against former heads of military counter-intelligence services (SKW), who were charged with co-operating with intelligence services of another country without the required authorization of the prime minister»

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«One has to state it openly: EU policy turned out to be a policy of double standards and cheating»

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«has long sought to tar Tusk with allegations of national betrayal, naming him among Poland’s foreign enemies and their domestic proxies»

Gran bella Unione Europea!

Nota.

Ever since the EU summit in which Donald Tusk was reelected President of the EU Council against Warsaw’s will, Tusk’s greatest rival, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has been escalating the conflict. Tusk now faces treason charges.

Kaczynski’s warnings were of no avail; the positions have actually become even more entrenched. Between 2007 and 2014, Donald Tusk served as Polish prime minister. Since then, he has served as EU Council president and was reelected for a second term on March 9 of this year by 27 member states, with only one vote against him from Poland. Now Warsaw is trying to come up with reasons to oppose this choice. Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski says that expert reports view Tusk’s reelection as legally questionable, even “falsified,” as Warsaw’s preferred candidate, the MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, had apparently not even been allowed to run. However, other government representatives have distanced themselves from the foreign minister’s statement.

Political opponents accuse Tusk of treason

The charges filed by Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz pose a greater risk for Tusk. Macierewicz, one of the most powerful figures in the current government, has accused Tusk of “diplomatic treason” with regard to the 2010 Polish Air Force plane crash near Smolensk in Russia. The offense can be compared to “treason” as defined by other European states and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

According to the Polish news agency PAP, the charges have been filed for the time period after the airplane crash. Tusk’s government has been accused of grave errors in the handling of the investigation with Russia and for having been too lenient on Moscow. Then-president Lech Kaczynski, Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s twin brother, and 95 other people on board the Polish Air Force plane were killed, including high-ranking government and military officials, politicians and members of the clergy.

In the charges, Macierewicz maintains that Tusk “did not fulfill his duties.” Tusk allegedly left it to Russia to investigate the accident. Also, Tusk had apparently done too little to have the airplane wreckage returned by 2011 from Russia to Poland, as promised by Moscow’s then-president Dmitry Medvedev. This also included efforts to return the flight recorder. The wreckage and the black box are still in Russia.

An attempt at a political takedown

It is interesting that the allegations as stated only encompass the time period after the accident. No one has been accused of causing the disaster. That is what Tomasz Diemoniak, former defense minister in the liberal government, says. He believes that the current criminal charges are pure propaganda. The investigative committee for the Smolensk crash created by Macierewicz has apparently already discredited itself and not yet discovered anything, Diemoniak says. An aviation expert noted that the current charges were irrelevant for the investigation into the cause of the accident.

However, these charges are not the only problem that Tusk faces. He has already been summoned as a witness in Warsaw for another trial related to a cooperation agreement reached in 2013 between Polish and Russian intelligence agencies. Tusk was supposed to testify but did not appear due to appointments he had as President of the EU Council. Now, he is expected to be summoned once again in April.

Another problem may be the Amber Gold scandal that is being investigated by an inquiry committee set up by Polish parliament. The scandal entails the fraudulent Gdansk financial institution and the affiliated airline OLT Express, where Tusk’s son Michal worked for a brief period of time. The inquiry committee has summoned Michal to testify and also asked him when and if his father had found out about Amber Gold’s scams.

Another problem on a smaller scale could be the investigation into the privatization of the chemical group Ciech. While Tusk was in office, Ciech was sold at a low price to the international investment group Kulczyk Investments.

Foreseeable struggle to maintain presidency

In the meantime, Polish media are already speculating whether Warsaw can obtain a European arrest warrant for Tusk. However, there is no automatic procedure that would allow Tusk to be extradited to Warsaw by other EU countries. As a witness in other trials, he could also testify from abroad or in a videoconference.

It is likely that most of these legal measures would make it very risky for Tusk to enter his home country. They could also damage his authority as president of the EU Council. When the PiS government took office, Tusk trivialized the attacks from Warsaw, in the belief that they were of a personal nature. “They will talk and talk, and then have enough of it,” is apparently what he once said. Now he is worried about himself and his son.

The showdown is yet to come. It will take place before the 2020 presidential election at the latest. Tusk is considered the most promising candidate of the Polish opposition. The Polish magazine “Newsweek Polska” wrote that until then, the country will be shaped by two processes: the “dynamics of discrediting the government” and the “dynamics of the authoritarian reorganization of the country.” Both processes have the potential to escalate. “The clash is inevitable, but the moment and impact of the clash is unpredictable, and in this equation there is a great unknown: how Polish citizens will act.”

Poland’s Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz has accused EU Council President Donald Tusk of betraying state interests to Moscow. The claim invokes the 2010 plane crash that killed the Polish president.

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Macierewicz believes that Tusk committed a “criminal offense” by accepting a deal on investigating the crash with Russia, which allegedly limited the Polish role in the probe.

“Tusk made an illegal contract with Vladimir Putin to the detriment of Poland and should bear criminal responsibility for that,” Macierewicz told the Gazeta Polska Codziennie on Tuesday.

The defense minister, who heads a special commission re-investigating the crash, notified the officials in the prosecutor’s office of his suspicions regarding Tusk. According to Macierewicz, then-Prime Minister Tusk committed an “abuse of trust in foreign relations.”

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said the claims amounted to “diplomatic treason.” The prosecutors now have 30 days to decide whether to investigate.

Doubts over Smolensk probe

In 2010, then-President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people died when their plane crashed while it was approaching Smolensk. The president and several senior military and government officials were traveling to Russia to honor the victims of the Katyn massacre of Poles by the Soviet secret service in 1940. To this day, many in Kaczynski’s ruling PiS party suspect foul play and a conspiracy between the Russian authorities and members of the government led by Donald Tusk.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful PiS chairman and the twin brother of the late president, has accused Tusk of contributing to his brother’s death.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister Macierewicz said that Tusk failed to “guarantee the participation of representatives of Poland in all investigative activities on the site” and to ensure the return of the plane wreck.

‘It is purely about emotions’

European Council President Donald Tusk has repeatedly dismissed the accusations.

“This is not a matter of legal or political nature, it is purely about emotions and obsessions,” he said on Tuesday. “Therefore, it is not within my competence to comment on cases like this one.”

Macierewicz’s statements appear to be the latest chapter in the embarrassing row between the two largest political parties in Poland. Last week, the government summoned Tusk as a witness in the case about cooperation between Russian and Polish secret services. Tusk refused to testify. Earlier this month, Warsaw found itself isolated after campaigning to remove Tusk from the top EU job. All other EU members voted for Tusk, granting him another two-and-a-half-year mandate.

European Council head Donald Tusk won’t testify in a prosecutor’s probe in Warsaw into cooperation between Polish and Russian secret services when he was PM. The battle of words between Warsaw and Brussels rages on.

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The questioning has been set for Wednesday and relates to a case against former secret service officials, the prosecutors’ office said on Monday.

“Donald Tusk has been summoned as a witness in a case against former heads of military counter-intelligence services (SKW), who were charged with co-operating with intelligence services of another country without the required authorization of the prime minister,” prosecutor Michal Dziekanski said.

In December 2016 the commercial television channel TVN and daily newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza” reported that representatives of the SKW and the Russian special services, the FSB, had met on several occasions in 2010. The meetings were reportedly connected with the disengagement of Polish troops from Afghanistan, whose return route home would have crossed Russian territory.

The website “niezalezna.pl” reported that several Russians had visited the SKW headquarters in Poland and that the generals, Janusz Nosek and Piotr Pytel, had been in Russia.

The other 27 member states voted to support a prolongation of Tusk’s tenure, much to Warsaw’s very public chagrin.

Warsaw later accused the EU of “cheating,” adding that it would conduct a “negative” policy towards Brussels.

Tusk was prime minister from 2007 to 2014 and has been in the top EU job since then.

The European Commission has chastised Warsaw since late 2015 for failing to resolve an ongoing constitutional crisis, but has so far failed to take actions.

“One has to state it openly: EU policy turned out to be a policy of double standards and cheating,” Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said in the weekend edition of the “Super Express” tabloid.

The minister added that Poland would not boycott the European Council and will take part in its meetings. “We must be aware that we may be cheated any moment,” he said.

Unlocking narrative strands

The PiS government, since coming to office in October 2015 has promoted a narrative of bellicose anti-Russianism. At times, it has also directed its fire at the EU.

This has been buttressed by an ongoing public investigation into a 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, western Russia, that killed a large number of Poland’s political and military elite, including the then-president Lech Kaczynski, the twin brother of today’s powerful head of PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

PiS has said it does not believe several earlier investigations that indicated a combination of pilot error, bad weather and miscommunication caused the crash. It has pointed the finger at Moscow and Tusk, on various occasions.

Kaczynski has long sought to tar Tusk with allegations of national betrayal, naming him among Poland’s foreign enemies and their domestic proxies and in the process evoking and seeking to rekindle a Polish martyrological narrative of self-legitimation.

He talks regularly of US President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia as selling out Polish interests, despite the absence of much evidence.

PiS’ anti-Russianism is also closely calibrated with its geopolitical strategy in relation to building support within NATO.